


Dark Heart

by mechafly



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Arona Livesy, Arona still hates the world, F/F, Genderbending, Robin Sugden, Robin is still pretty, genderbend au, robron - Freeform, secret lesbian affair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 14:30:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3695837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechafly/pseuds/mechafly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I was snagged by the idea of what Robron would be like if they were women. The same but... different. </p><p>--</p><p>Robin Sugden has everything Arona doesn't: blonde hair, a flirtatious grin, legs for miles, a long-term stable relationship, money. Her veneer of heterosexuality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Heart

Robin sits at the back of the pub and Arona watches her.

Robin's bare legs are crossed and one manicured palm is wrapped around her husband's shoulder. Her smile gleams and her blonde hair curls around her cheek, ready for the touch. Her husband admires her like a work of art, or a trophy. And that is precisely what Robin is. But every so often Robin shoots glances away from her husband. Her faces flashes briefly with a truly hideous expression. Nobody sees.

But Arona sees. Their glances brush each other. Arona sees Robin's big blue eyes twisted by anger, lust, and guilt. Robin's beautiful. For some reason, Arona finds her even more beautiful in these moments, when the placid mask falls away and the bitter darkness of Robin's heart shows through.

Arona loves this woman more than anything. And Robin loves Arona in all her ugliness. 

Arona drags her eyes away and grins into her pint. It couldn't be any more fucked up. It couldn't be any more perfect.

 

 

 

They are very different people.

Arona is a mechanic at the village garage, and before that she was a general troublemaker around town. Tough-headed and always scowling, Arona hides her eyes behind a dark fringe and communicates mainly in monosyllables. She doesn't like being messed around and she doesn't like bullshit. Her mum will tell anyone over the pub counter that she wasn't even the slightest bit surprised that Arona turned out to be a lesbian, what with her surly ways and the violence and the short haircuts; Arona remembers it differently but just rolls her eyes whenever the topic comes up.

Robin Sugden has everything Arona doesn't: blonde hair, a flirtatious grin, legs for miles, a long-term stable relationship, money. Her veneer of heterosexuality.

It shouldn't have happened to begin with. But Arona finds it too irresistible to show Robin — glittering, smug trophy wife — exactly what she's missing. Show her how much better she can get it from a woman. Make her beg for it. It turns out Robin doesn't need showing, not by a long shot.

That first kiss is seared into her memory. Robin is fire and claws, her hot breathy mouth pressing urgently into Arona's. Like she wants to devour her. Robin growls right into Arona's mouth with a shock of perfume and musky sweat. Just as sudden, she pulls away, not meeting Arona's eyes, driving away.

Arona wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and looks up at the open, darkening sky for a long, long time.

 

 

 

 

"I hate her. I hate her." Arona hisses and struggles against Robin's arms but Robin's stronger than she looks. Her arms are clamped around Arona, strong and firm, until Arona finally stops struggling against her hold. Her breath comes out in ragged, wet gasps. "I want her to fucking leave me alone!"

"'S okay. It's okay," Robin murmurs into her hair, so much closer and softer than anyone's ever bothered to be with her. Robin holds her with the firmness of God.

"Don't want to talk about it." Arona slumps in Robin's arms. Exhausted. Fuck, how she hates emotions. Feelings. The raw pain of a mother who was never there, of a father whose face she can't even remember. Of always being different, and alone, and so, so scared.

Robin lifts a hand and strokes her hair. The touch goes straight through her, to something primal and instinctual. A maternal touch. Quietness.

"You don't have to talk right now." Robin soothes. A long moment. "But you have to talk about it sometime." Arona grips her arms. "Not with Chas, if you don't want to. With me, maybe. It's hurting you. Bottling all of this up inside."

Her words float through Arona's exhausted mind without catching on anything. 

"I worry about you," Robin sighs. "But then I begin to worry that I'm the one making you worse... What can I do when the only person that can help you is the one who's hurting you the most? I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to fix you, Arona."

Arona buries her head in Robin's soft perfumed shoulder and doesn't think about what that means.

 

 

 

 

 

Robin isn't shivering at all even though she's standing out in the cold in just her skin-tight wedding outfit and nothing else. That's what Arona notices first.

Her face is pale as milk but there's no uncertainty to her whatsoever as she avoids Arona's eyes and gestures into the barn. She's reining herself in so tight that Arona can't read a thing from Robin's face, which is usually an open book to her. It's like the Robin she so intimately knows has disappeared and a stone-faced angel as replaced her. A statue in a bridal gown, terrible and beautiful.

Robin leaves her there, alone with the corpse of the man who was once her lover. His neck's snapped clean and his eyes are glassy. It feels like he's looking right at her every time Arona steals a glance at his face. It feels like he's accusing her. He's a handsome man and the expression on his face is one of shock, and sadness. 

Arona wipes away fingerprints and footsteps. Her hands shake and her breath comes out in panicked gasps. She's been too close to death before and it tinges her mind blue. Death is breathing her in. How strange that it's just her and the corpse here, with their one thing in common — that they'd both loved Robin Sugden. Perhaps this is what happens to everyone who loves Robin, their inevitable end. Perhaps it's a warning. Robin doesn't play nice with the things she considers her own. 

Or perhaps that's just Arona's wishful thinking, the part of her that craves an early death and would give anything for atonement and a clean conscience, to swap places with the dead man, who has people who love him and will carry his loss with them forever.

Arona gets up and walks out of the darkness of the barn. The lasting image in her mind is of Robin watching her parents' graves from a distance, and the way her eyes had been blue and cold.

 

 

 

Arona's blood sings as her fist pummels Robin's pretty mouth. She does it again just to feel the giddy sensation of her soul soaring.

She enjoys Robin's scared breathing and her terrified eyes. The power of it makes her breath quicken in time with Robin's. Arona loves the sensation of soft flesh giving away under her fists. The way Robin lies askew on the ground, a broken bird. Broken angel.

Robin is blinking blood out of her eyes when she gets to her knees and looks up at Arona. Good, Arona thinks, very good. Robin looks like she's praying for mercy.

They're on the same stretch of road where they first kissed, with the sky blue above them and Robin was the one knocking the breath out of her.

Arona doesn't much like being in love, not when it's with Robin Sugden.

It's too much like being held captive, and Arona's a caged tiger rattling the bars, looking for a way out.

 

 

 

 

This whole love thing, Arona thinks it's like being seasick. It's bearable most of the time but it comes in waves and sometimes it just overwhelms her and threatens to drive her completely off the edge. She just needs a minute to breathe. Needs a minute of focussing pain.

It doesn't matter whose pain. Her's or Robin's. Robin's hurting Arona. Arona's hurting Robin. 

Same pain. Same death.

Same clarity in that singular moment, the gasping inward breath.

 

 

 

 

They say love is pure, but Arona's got everything else mixed up in there. Jealousy so fierce it chokes her. Anger, burning her throat. Shame and fear. Guilt, stabbing down to her core. Elation, hope, grief, terror, madness, simple joy. It's a fucking mess and she can't get out. Doesn't want to.

"I love you." Robin kisses her for a long, long while, and her mouth tastes like everything good and bad all at once.

"I love you too." Arona tracks tears down her cheeks. Robin wipes them away with gentle thumbs and her long nails leave scores on Arona's skin.

Arona can't afford to lose Robin. She knows she'd never find anyone like her again. She'll never have this again. She just won't. And she doesn't think she can live without it. 

 

 

 

 

And so it happens.

"Do you trust me?" Robin has a smile of pure sunshine, but Arona's seeing double, the pure darkness behind the smile. Robin's holding out her hand but they're both at a cliff edge, and Robin's latest scheme will pull Arona down into that chasm with her.

Arona suddenly has a very clear picture of herself, sometime in the future. Perhaps the very near future. She'll be a corpse on the ground, fallen from a great height. A broken body. Just another dead ex-lover of Robin's. If Robin becomes sick of her. If Robin ever suspects that she might tell.

Her funeral will be another blip in the life of the village. Her mother will cry noisy tears over her grave and Paddy's heart will be broken. Her cousins and uncles and aunts will say, what a terrible shame. A terrible accident. Robin herself will dab at her own eyes with a handkerchief and follow the procession of the coffin in a pair of killer heels. She'll give a eulogy about what a good friend Arona was, a troubled young woman but with a big heart.

Arona pulls Robin down for a kiss. She loves Robin's tongue and lips and the way her mouth is soft and wet, like velvet. She loves the promise of danger in the taste of Robin's kiss. It's comforting, the same comfort of standing at the edge of a cliff and looking directly down into the chasm. It's the promise of death, of oblivion, of peace.

It's so much easier not to think.

She'd rather have Robin and die young, than not have her at all.


End file.
